Reincarnation: Are there Past Lives?

byCraig Hamilton-Parker

Reincarnation – a psychic talks about past lives.

Article by Craig Hamilton-Parker. Is there such a thing as reincarnation and past lives? Many spiritualists argue that reincarnation is a myth and remains unproven. Read this extract from my book below and some of the cases I cite elsewhere and then post your views about reincarnation on the comments below.

RADIO BLURB: Renowned psychic medium team Craig and Jane Hamilton-Parker have helped countless people connect with their pasts, futures and their loved ones on the other side. Now Craig joins Rene to talk about their work, the secret spiritual history of the world, group reincarnation and more!

Have you glimpsed a past life

You have read stories from our casebooks that indicate that most of us, perhaps all, have ESP powers that enable us to communicate with the afterlife. You have also read about people who have seen into the future and past. And I have suggested throughout the text that people can even have glimpses of past lives. At this stage it may seen incongruous to believe both in reincarnation AND in a spirit world but in the next two chapters I hope to show that this is not a paradox……

You only live once….. or do you? Reincarnation is one of the world’s oldest beliefs that date back to the times of the ancient Greeks and early Indian civilisations. Many people today, from all walks of life, believe that they have lived before. Here are the stories of some ordinary people with astonishing memories of lives from long ago.

Have you ever lived before? Perhaps you’ve had a recurring dream set in another time and place or maybe you have a nagging feeling that you were once someone else? Talk of reincarnation was once taboo but in today’s tolerant times many people are coming forward to say that they are convinced that have lived before. The previous lives they describe are not necessarily about being a person of great importance. Most talk about the tedium of previous ages and often believe themselves to have been thoroughly un-likable characters.

Belief in reincarnation is common in the East, particularly among Hindus and Buddhists, but much rarer in our own culture. However the concept is not entirely alien to us. The ancient Greeks, and particularly Orpheus, Pythagoras and Plato, talk of the migration of the soul through different lives both human and animal. The early Christian Church also accepted the principle, which was expounded by Gnostic and by numerous Church fathers, including Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Saint Jerome. The doctrine was only declared a heresy 553 years after the death of Christ by the Second Council of Constantinople.

Research

In modern times there has been a great deal of research into the claims of people who say they have remembered their previous lives. One of the best known cases concerns Shanti Devi, born in Delhi in 1926. At the age of seven she told her mother that she had been alive before, in a town called Muttra. Over the next two years her recall of events increased until she was telling her parents about her previous husband, their house, and her three children. At the age of nine a complete stranger came to the door to discuss business with her father and Shanti claimed she recognised him as her husband’s cousin from her previous life.

To the astonishment of everyone the man did live in Muttra and agreed that his cousin’s wife, Ludgi, had died ten years earlier. When the husband came to visit her, Shanti recognised him immediately and flung herself into his arms. When she was taken to Muttra, she was able to direct the carriage to Ludgi’s house and identified her father-in-law sitting in front of it. She also recognised her two eldest children, but not the youngest, whose birth had cost Ludgi her life.

There is now a growing wealth of cases like Shanti’s that are suggestive of reincarnation and today many people are exploring ways to unlock their own lost memories. Some people have spontaneous recall but there are also professional people who will help you unlock your hidden memories. Most ‘Past Life Therapists’ use deep relaxation sessions or hypnotic techniques to guide their client back into time. Firstly they encourage them to recall events in this life and then back into early childhood. A point comes when they can ask the subject to now look to the time before their birth and recall what they see and feel. Some describe a period between lives where they live in a heavenly afterlife but most jump straight to memories of other lives from history.

Of course this is fascinating psychological experimentation but it is also claimed that regression into past lives has a therapeutic effect. There are many cases on record to indicate that the illnesses we experience in this life are the traces left by the traumatic experiences brought forwards from past lives. For example a person suffering from severe eczema may discover that in a past life they were burnt to death. By reliving the experience they understand the root cause of their physical problems and the blemishes disappear after the therapy session. There are many cases on record where psychological problems and physical illness have been healed after a period of Past Life Therapy.

In the East reincarnation is seen as the progress of the soul through many lives on earth, as though so many grades in a school, before it ‘graduates’ to the immortal perfection of oneness with the infinite. Throughout this progress we accumulate karma which is a Sanskrit word taken from the word Kri to do, and is used to describe the effects of past actions. The Western equivalent would be Christ’s maxim ‘as ye sow so shall ye reap’. In Hinduism a man’s karma follows him from incarnation to incarnation until fulfilled or spiritually transcended.

Of course all these ‘memories’ of past lives may be fantasy, genetic memories or even clairvoyance of the past. The brain is an incredible storehouse of unconscious memory and in hypnotic trance can be coaxed to recall vast amounts of information. A page from a book glanced at in childhood can be recalled word for word by a hypnotised adult many years later. The miraculous cures could be psychosomatic and recalling past lives may just be a way of resolving psychological problems through fantasy. The evidence for reincarnation will always be a subject for debate but the fact is that more people than ever before are coming forward to proclaim that they’ve lived before.

This is an extract from my book The Psychic Casebook which as well as including cases of reincarnation and past lives also includes casebooks about life after death, angels, spirits and lots of casebooks from our psychic readings and work as mediums. You can read extracts from my books throughout this site as well as enjoy videos of us giving psychic readings and demonstrating mediumship. And of course – and here come my advert – you can also get psychic readings, tarot readings and mediumship readings via this website. If you have enjoyed reading this extract from The Psychic Casebook please consider buying the book or booking a psychic reading with me or one of our team.

Also feel free to post your ideas about reincarnation in the comments below. Many spiritualists claim that there is no such thing as reincarnation and past lives and future lives. Do you agree. They say there is no proof of reincarnation. Please add your thoughts below. And for a bit of fun you can also take our online Past Life Test

Summary

Article Name

Are there past lives?

Author

Craig Hamilton-Parker

Description

Is there such a thing as reincarnation and past lives? Many spiritualists argue that reincarnation is a myth and remains unproven. Read this extract from my book below and some of the cases I cite elsewhere and then post your views about reincarnation on the comments below. Extract from my book Opening to the Other Side (2005) ISBN 1-4027-1346-0

About Craig Hamilton-ParkerCRAIG HAMILTON-PARKER is a celebrated U.K. medium who has confounded skeptics by the uncanny accuracy of his readings. Craig and his wife Jane have had their own TV shows in the UK and USA including 'The Spirit of Princess Diana'. In 2003 the BBC made a 3 part documentary about their work. Craig is the author of 15 books.

I recently did a radio interview about group souls and reincarnation. We spoke a lot about the Cathars and having provable memories of past lives, spiritual history of the world, group reincarnation, the Cathars, and more. Here’s the link to the show download.

I’d be interested to hear your comments. What do you think about some of the topics raised in the show?

Have you an opinion about some of the topics discussed such as: the Cathars, why on our tours to France people seem inexplicably drawn back again and again. And how about the story of the priest Berenger Sauniere of Rennes-le-Chateau who died in 1917 and/or his housekeeper/confident Marie Denarnaud who died in 1953. Is there something special about this story – have people reading this had reincarnation memories of this time?

Thousands of researchers have spent countless hours researching them and looking to them for answers to mysterious activities there in Rennes-le-Chateau and surrounding areas. Have you some ideas to share?

We had some comments on FaceBook about where to find a past life therapist to help recall reincarnation memories this looked helpful.

I also had a regression with a lady called Diane Egby Edwards in Bournemouth who was very nice and would help you recall past lives in a relaxed state (Though not a full hypnotic regression) Anyone any good ideas where people could look for a really top-notch reincarnation hypnotist? Let me know and I’ll add the link. Google’s results for anything to do with spiritual topics are a little skewered nowadays to their advertisers and brand names so it’s harder to find real practitioners other than by word of mouth.

Also the skeptics tend to debunk reincarnation though it’s good to see now that some people are debunking the debunkers. A good person to look into is Dr. Brian Weiss. Do you think reincarnation is unproven, can be explained simply as a belief or is there some proof out there?

I am sorry but we do not give past life readings or personal advice about reincarnation via this article. You can however discuss reincarnation and past lives in out community area with other interested people.

I use to tell my Mom at at the age of three, closer to four, that I wanted to go back to my other family and described things I never saw. I told her about toys, my house, the park. How I died. I was apparently hit by an antique car while crossing the street supervised by my nanny, who was wearing a bun and long black dress. I remember the parks black rod iron fence. I use to have black glove like hands come at me until I was about ten. They would come out of walls etc. SO maybe I was a little crazy or there is something more. Who knows? The goal is to be happy in the life you have. Past is just that.

I believe that energy is neither created or destroyed, only changed. A mix of spirituality and science. I think the possibility of reincarnation is absolutely possible. I’d love to talk to a psychic or medium, or whomever could tell me about myself more. I have always thought of myself as an empath. People’s emotions are hard to dismiss. I always bump heads with female bosses. The idea of our energies changing into new people is not really a hard thing to fathom. I continue to seek the truth and want to know more.

According to many tests, studies and even astrological clues:
-I was a great writer or author.
-I was tortured or depressed.
-My first or last name began with an H.
-I met my mother through conflict or war.
-My dad and I have an inexplicable, long-term bond.
-My first love and I were together before (his Sun conjunct my South Node).
-I was born around 1800 AD(?!).
What I know for sure:
-My past life was not wholly pleasant.
-I was PROBABLY a male.
-Once I was at an antiques store and saw some records/vinyl discs. I looked at the art and style on the covers, probably from the 50’s-60’s, and it made me uneasy. I don’t know why. Maybe that’s when I died.